India Needs Urgently a Communication Revolution

Summary

Marking the United Nations’ 1983 World Communication Year, N. T. Taskar — a former Technical Director of the Department of Electronics with three decades inside Indian P&T — argues that India’s poverty-removal agenda cannot succeed without a national communication revolution, and that the chief obstacle to that revolution is the Government of India itself. He opens with a brisk historical sketch: the British built telegraph and telephone networks to serve administration, defence and commerce, and (a point he stresses) deliberately left big-city telephone provision to the private sector for nearly sixty years, with Bombay, Karachi and Madras enjoying automatic exchanges while Calcutta languished on manual service until 1943.

Against this background Taskar surveys the post-war world telecommunications scene — the transistor of 1948, computers shrinking by a factor of a thousand, electronic mail, 2.8 million personal computers sold in the United States in 1982 — and contrasts it with India, where 80% of the world’s telephones sit in North America and Europe and the third world is being left further behind. He then walks sector by sector through the cost of the Government’s three-decade monopoly on both the provision of communication services and the manufacture of communication equipment: banking (quoting bank economist Dr. K. S. Krishnaswami at length on the productivity gap with Tokyo, Singapore, Bahrain, London and New York), industry (industrial estates in Nasik, Aurangabad and Roha forced to run their own courier services because P&T links were unreliable), the Indian Telephone Industries’ own factories at Naini and Rae Bareli being effectively cut off from their Bangalore head office, the power sector and State Electricity Boards starved of communication equipment, and Indian Railways forced to abandon centralised traffic control because P&T could not deliver. He invokes Arya Chanakya’s principle of “Artha Eva Pradhan” and points to France’s 1960s rural telecom investments and the U.S. New Deal as models India ignored.

The final sections give the statistics of post-Independence growth — telephone exchanges from 300 to nearly 8,000, telephones from 1 lakh to 30 lakh, long-distance circuits from 1,500 to over 70,000 — only to insist that quantitative expansion has not produced reliable service, because P&T after the 1956 Industrial Policy Resolution became “impervious to any constructive criticism” and zealously guarded its monopoly. Taskar warns that, unlike the United States breaking up the Bell System, India faces the harder task of breaking a monopoly held by the Government itself, and that failure to do so will not only stunt the economy but generate conditions “very favourable to a violent upheaval.” His recommendations (cut off at PDF page 20) begin by reframing the choice as one between communication-led peaceful evolution toward an egalitarian society and a simmering volcano of public discontent.

Key points

• Frames the 1983 UN World Communication Year as a moment for India to introspect on why post-Independence telecom expansion has not delivered reliable service.

• Reads British-era policy as a case for plural provision: telephone service in Bombay, Karachi and Madras was left to the private sector for nearly 60 years with automatic exchanges, while Government-run Calcutta languished on manual service until 1943.

• Identifies the Government’s three-decade total monopoly over both the provision of communication facilities and the manufacture of communication equipment as the root structural problem — ‘In no advanced country of the world this is so.’

• Walks through sector-by-sector damage: banking productivity (citing Dr. K. S. Krishnaswami), industrial estates in Nasik/Aurangabad/Roha needing private courier services, Indian Telephone Industries’ own factories at Naini and Rae Bareli being uncontactable, power sector starved of equipment, and Railways forced to abandon centralised traffic control.

• Marshals comparative evidence: 80% of the world’s telephones in North America and Europe; computer size down by a factor of 1,000 and reliability up by a factor of 1,000 since the early 1950s; France’s 1960s rural telecom push and the U.S. New Deal as models India ignored.

• Quotes statistics of post-Independence growth (exchanges 300 → 8,000; telephones 1 lakh → 30 lakh; long-distance circuits 1,500 → 70,000) only to argue that quantity has not produced quality or reliability.

• Reads the 1956 Industrial Policy Resolution and P&T’s subsequent zealotry as the moment Indian telecom became impervious to criticism, and contrasts this with the U.S. administration’s decision to break up the Bell monopoly.

• Closes with a political warning: continued monopoly will produce conditions ‘very favourable to a violent upheaval’ and only a communication revolution can underwrite a peaceful transition to an egalitarian society.